The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for manipulating rod-shaped articles of the tobacco processing industry, and more particularly to improvements in a method and apparatus for transferring cigarettes or the like between making means and processing tipping machine. Still more particularly, the invention relates to improvements in a method and apparatus for transferring plain cigarettes or like rod-shaped articles from several makers to a common filter tipping machine.
It is already known to place two cigarette makers next to each other and to sever the cigarette rods which are formed in such makers while the rods advance along two adjacent parallel paths so that each row yields a series or file of plain cigarettes of double unit length. Reference may be had to German Offenlegungsschriften Nos. 32 19 556 and 32 40 555 which disclose transmission-driven twin flutes for reception of pairs of plain cigarettes of double unit length and the transport of such twin flutes along an endless path. The flutes of each pair deposit the respective plain cigarettes of double unit length into the peripheral flutes of a drum-shaped conveyor which forms part of or is adjacent to the filter tipping machine. The pitch of the flutes on the conveyor (i.e., the distance between the centers of neighboring flutes, as considered in the circumferential direction of the drum) is the same as the distance between the centers of twin flutes of the transmission-driven transfer mechanism between such conveyor and the two cigarette makers. Such apparatus operate properly as long as the just outlined conditions prevail, i.e., as long as the pitch of the flutes on the drum-shaped conveyor is the same as the distance between the centers of twin flutes in the transfer mechanism. However, it is often desirable and advantageous to maintain successive cigarettes on the conveyor of the filter tipping machine at a greater distance from one another than the distance between the cigarettes which are produced by the two makers and are introduced into the respective flutes of the transfer mechanism. As a rule, the desirable or optimum spacing between successive cigarettes in a filter tipping machine is determined by the mutual spacing of successive cigarettes on the so-called rolling conveyor in which pairs of plain cigarettes are united with filter mouthpieces of double unit length by convoluting adhesive-coated uniting bands therearound. The pitch of the flutes on such rolling conveyor is 12 mm times pi.
German Pat. No. 24 00 088 proposes to increase the mutual spacing of cigarettes subsequent to the transfer of the articles onto a conveyor of the filter tipping machine. Such proposal is not satisfactory, mainly because abrupt acceleration of plain cigarettes invariably causes the escape of at least some tobacco particles at the ends of the cigarettes with attendant softening of the ends.